Apparently Clark has beaten me to the post-meeting blog post. If I wasn’t writing this <beep/> on VIM I’m sure <beep/> I could have posted it before him.:w<beep/>ctrl-W (FYI – this is VIM humor so there’s only a .01% chance of anyone getting it.)

<Recap/>
Clark’s post did a nice job summing things up. I’ll just do a quick recap and move on. Clark asked if anyone looked deeper into websockets (last month’s meeting),  introduced the idea of working on a MidwestGeeks.net (more on that in a bit) and did a quick overview of local storage. Clark fielded a couple questions on local storage, he then went around the room to see what people were interested in and we broke off and started coding. We had people working on local storage, websockets and SproutCore (JavaScript MVC framework). Coding went a little long (again) and we didn’t get a chance to formally regroup.  The loose structure and focus on coding and discussions seems to be working well, but the ending is rushed.

<My_Stuff/>
I spent my coding time trying to implement a simple ‘Bingo Card Generator’ in SproutCore. I had already run through the Todo demo and was trying to branch out into a new ‘problem set’. I failed miserable and took Clark down with me. He actually had it worse since he was unable to get the SproutCore framework running on his Mac. The main error message (if I recall correctly) was ‘Unable to locate resource’.  We did see another error message that appeared related to Ruby web server. This was occurring by simply running sc-init (to create app) and sc-server (to run the demo server). We got a little sidetracked with the problem and didn’t do our$elves any favor$. ($ is an unnecessary joke that only Clark is likely to understand)

<My_Takeaways/>
-  Based on my issues with SproutCore and my limited knowledge of another JavaScript Framework (Ext JS), I created a Github repo  where I plan to work on the ‘Bingo Card Generator’ in both frameworks. Hopefully a fellow angleBracketer will get a chance to take a look and give feedback. I’ll even take feedback from someone who hasn’t been to angleBracket <cough>@arthurakay</cough>

- My thoughts about sharing echo Clark’s.  It’s great that the people who attend get to work through problems with the help of others. But we’re not doing a good job sharing the bits that we learned. Shawn mentioned putting notes on a projector, which Clark and I had previously discussed, so maybe that is something we need to look into. I also think giving people notecards at the beginning to write down notes/questions/issues and collecting and sharing them at the end might work as well.

- I really like how Clark asks everyone what they want to get out of the night.  This is the cornerstone of angleBracket meetings. Work on the topic, work on MidwestGeeks.net, work on whatever you want.  You don’t need to work alone.

<MidwestGeeks.net/>
It’s a great idea and I’m going to repeat Clark and say it needs better focus. Clark may or may not agree with this but I’m going to make up a few ‘ user stories’ …

- A midwest geek wants to find an event close to his/her parent’s basement so he/she goes to MidwestGeeks.net, pulls up a map, zooms in/out on a map to see events closet to him/her. He/she clicks an event’s pin and a window pops up detailing (event name, website, address, meeting date(s), topics etc) the event.

- A hipster midwest geek only cares about JavaScript topics (obviously) so he/she goes to MidwestGeeks.net to find events relevant to JavaScript. The hipster geek enters ‘JavaScript’ into a filter/search box and only events relevant to JavaScript are returned (If .NET topics are returned MidwestGeeks.net loses all hipster cred). The filtered  results can be returned as a list of events by name, filtered entries in a calendar, or a map with only JavaScript relevent events as pins.

- A midwest geek wants to plan out his/her summer event schedule. The geek goes to MidwestGeeks.net and is overloaded with awesome events happening every weekend and every third Thursday in Grayslake, IL @7pm. This midwest geek enjoys whitespace so he/she filters for Python but there are still too many results so he/she clicks (drags/drops) a few items to his/her ‘My Events’. When he/she views ‘My Events’  a calender (or other type of visual…I’m just rambling now) appears showing on items dragged to ‘My Events’.

<Conclusion/>

•  There are a lot of good things happening but we still have some work to do on the format and focus of the meetings.
•  A few ideas to help share at the end are ‘shared notes’ on a projector and some type of note-card system.
• If you want to try a language/framework/technology out that you don’t use daily, this is a good group/format to find someone to help you try it out.
•  Checkout my GitHub repo (http://github.com/paaschpa/Bingo) for SpoutCore and Ext JS stuff
• If you’re using VIM poorly, turn off the beeping sound
• Writing a blog post that makes jokes no one is likely to understand is probably not a good idea
•  Writing a blog post that makes jokes no one is likely to understand with user stories no one is likely to understand is probably a worse idea

<Pat/>